Johnny joined Jul 12, 2009

I'm a student in London studying video game design, development and some history... and some other stuff, on one of those courses that gets slagged off by everyone for being too unfocused... so yea, hate me :'(

EYE is a very good example. They did it right and lots of people recognised that with a purchase. As for Orion obviously there are some controversies that surround that story, some unfair on the team and some are more 50/50 since it's hard to tell what's true and what's not. Looks good though, although I've heard it had some launch problems and I'm personally not touching it until I hear they've been fixed and it's worth buying. They did it for the right reasons as well but I'm not convinced they always did it in the right way, especially as far as community interaction goes.

That's quite an important factor, if the community isn't on your side it makes it really hard, especially the source community who are extremely vocal and active, so they can be a massive support but can also be a massive thorn in your side if even small but significant portions 'turn on you'.

True that. Cryengine is a bitch. Sure source is too, but Cryengine indie stuff never happens and that says something. Also Crysis mods only tend to be a couple of hours long at most, even when they've been worked on for years, which also says something. I predict sad faces when this draws to a close. Hope they prove me wrong.

Often in these cases the dev didn't plan to go retail from the start, they just realise along the way that they have something good enough that it could be a successful retail product, and what's more going commercial is a good excuse to get some more, or in some cases any monetary funding into the project, and end up making it the best it can be.

It worked out well for Dear Esther. Sure not so much for Dino D-Day, and Raindrop and Ivan's Secrets seem to be pretty dead (haven't heard anything for ages, but I might have missed it I guess).

As far as I see it, if you know what you want to do, and know where the money needs to be spent, have an idea of how much money, and are confident that retail is the right move financially and for the good of the final product in terms of quality, then do it. If you'e going retail however on a hazy promise of "retail could make this better although I'm so sure where or how yet", or "I just want to make money from my work". Don't, it always seems to go wrong.

Sounds like Bloom are doing it for the right reasons though, so good luck to em and I'll certainly buy it when it hopefully comes out as long as it's a good game and good value for money, as would many others I imagine.

On this project they're modders, not professional devs, if they were working on a commercial project I'm sure they'd spend less time playing Skyrim and more time developing and I'm sure when they are working on commercial projects they do, but in modding you have no deadlines, you have very little to no expenditure, and the worst thing that can happen is you get tired of the project and never finish it.

If playing some Skyrim keeps them happy while still spending time working on the mod now and again, I'd rather that than them force themselves to work on it, fall out of love with it, and never finish it.

I'm not trying to have a go at you personally, and believe me I empathise, but you backed everything up as attachments in emails? You can get 1TB external hard drives for around £60 now. Higher end flash drives can hold 30GB. You should always have two proper backups. Email attachments are not proper backups.

Modders just seem to do this all the time. They either back it up somewhere dumb or not at all. I swear this is the third mod in two months that I follow that have closed down because they lost it all and hadn't properly backed it up.

First off, great job, everything I don't mention below I love, and overall I think you have something really special on your hands here.

**SPOILERS BELOW**

The only issues I had with it were I got quite stuck on the part where the train stops at the tunnel and the power goes out. The squeeze to get between the wall and the train is really, really tight, and the first couple of times I tried to get through there I couldn't. It was almost luck that I managed in the end, I just got really frustrated then decided to try one more time and pop, just fit through, but if that gap could be made a little wider I think it'd avoid a lot of frustration for future players.

Secondly, and this is really minor to the point that I didn't care, but definitely noticed it quite early on so I guess it's worth mentioning since I imagine some people will care, the skybox is a bit off. I can see where it joins together quite plainly. So you might want to look at that.

Again though, overall I really enjoyed it and for an Alpha stage piece of worth it's remarkable.

I respectfully disagree. The maps don't look empty to me, just uncluttered. I think too often source modders in particular fill their maps up with tons of props and you end up constantly being in situations where you walk into a corridor or a room and think "oooO, lots of stuff, I wonder what I have to do here?" and it quickly becomes apparent you just have to walk through it, trying not to clip on all the physics objects as you go.

Minimalism in itself can be a very striking visual element. It's all about the mood you want an area to covay, and what you want the area to be used for, from both a gameplay and story perspective.

Maybe they could add some striking features that can build some more detail, but I'm not entirely convinced on that front on the basis of what this trailer alone shows, and if you mean cluttering them up, that's not necessarily a good idea IMO.